


A Pair of Antiques

by wintergrey



Category: Fallout 4
Genre: Intercrural Sex, M/M, Repair, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-14
Updated: 2016-01-14
Packaged: 2018-05-14 00:32:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,056
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5722882
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wintergrey/pseuds/wintergrey
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The <a href="http://promptgenerator.tumblr.com/kink2">prompt machine</a> gave me "public displays of affection + intercrural sex" and this is what happened. Sole Survivor Lucian Brand (kindly named by the <a href="http://www.behindthename.com/random/">Random Renamer</a>, which was obviously feeling merciful today) has a thing for Nick Valentine.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Pair of Antiques

Nick Valentine was not meant to be beautiful, not when he was made and certainly not now, decades after he was discarded. He is to Brand. That's one of the reasons Brand is so careful about putting him back together: he likes Nick the way he is. It's also the only chance he gets to put his hands on the synth since Nick has a knack for avoiding physical contact the rest of the time. And physical contact is what Brand wants.

"Ellie wants me to ask you to get me some new duds while you're down in the Institute next time," Nick says while Brand is meticulously smoothing down a frayed edge of skin along the line of his silver clavicle.

Wonderglue is about all that holds the synthetic skin to the lightweight skeletal structure underneath. Brand has tried everything else without luck--nothing lasts. Once, there was more insulation there to mimic human flesh. Where it remains under Nick's skin, Brand has had some luck with heat-sealing it to the metal and the skin alike but Nick's exposed areas are too weathered for the trick to work.

"New clothes? I can get you those up here." Brand puts the glue aside and reaches--reluctantly--for the scissors. Nick's healing systems are long-since expired and trimming what can't be mended is sometimes the only way to stave off even more repairs. Brand clips away skin that was too singed to anchor to the bone. He can't bring himself to throw away the scrap, he never can, so he tucks it in his pocket and tells himself it's so he can work on a new formulation.

"No, she was hoping you'd find me a new suit of skin. I think she's tired of looking at my ugly mug," Nick drawls. "I think everyone is."

"They sure stare a lot for people who are tired of looking." Brand doesn't bother keeping the snap out of his voice when he raises it enough to catch the ears of the Minutemen who are guilty of doing just that right now. Suddenly, they're all very busy finishing up work on their guns and armour. Super Mutants have been pushing northwest again and Brand is determined to keep pushing back.

"Can't blame them for wanting to catch a glimpse of a real antique. They like looking at you, too." Nick brushes the tips of his bare metal fingers over the back of Brand's hand. That's as close as he gets to a public display of affection.

"Do you want me to try?" Brand isn't sure it's possible, though the Institute has miles of unexplored deprecated labs and corridors, the legacy of an organization that tends to simply seal over its mistakes and move on.

"I don't want you going there more than you have to," Nick says. "Every time you go, there's more of a chance you won't get back. Keeping up this pretence of working for them isn't worth the risk, not even with everything you're managing to bring out."

"I'd do it for you." Brand kisses him on the cheek, high up on the right near the corner of his eye, where the skin and sensors are still intact.

"That's what worries me." Nick doesn't pull away but Brand hears the disapproving whir of microservos pulling Nick's expression into a frown. "You take too many chances for me already, Brand. Like that one."

People are watching. People are always watching Nick, always watching Brand. The synth. The survivor.

"I take chances for everyone." It's kind of Brand's job, now and two centuries ago, to take chances. That was what he did in the Army, it's what he's done since leaving the Vault. "Seems a bit unfair I can't blow one or two on the man I love."

"See, kid, that kind of talk will get you killed faster than your fondness for picking fights with Deathclaws." Nick straightens his coat as he gets up, puts his hat back on with the usual tilt to it that casts shadows over his worn-out face. "Thanks for the patch job. You're pretty handy with a glue stick, I'll give you that much."

"I didn't get here by being careful." Brand starts packing up his repair kit. "Maybe what keeps me from getting killed is having a reason not to, especially now that I don't have much left to stick around for."

"I'm sorry." Nick turns back, slowly. "It's just you know how people are, Brand. You need them to think the best of you. You want to talk glue, it's you that's holding this Commonwealth together. And I'm not about to be the one that ruins a promising future by thinking about myself."

"I don't want you to think about yourself." Brand tosses his welding goggles on top of everything else, then snaps the pack shut. "I want you to think about me."

"I do," Nick admits. "All the time. I wish they'd been a little more selective about what they loaded into this brain of mine because it sure as hell doesn't always match up with this body they gave me. You should know that. You'd be just as satisfied cuddling up to a Protectron."

That's further than they've ever gotten in this conversation. Brand will take it, take it and run with it. He follows Nick out of the garage.

"Does the Protectron have your sense of humour?" He steps in and tips Nick's hat back a little with the flick of a finger. "And your eyes? Because I could be convinced."

Nick's breath, or the semblance of it caused by the pumping of his internal mechanics, catches. "Brand."

"Nick." Brand isn't about to be deterred. He didn't survive the apocalypse and one tragedy after another just to be put off by a little physical incompatibility. He can't even say why he's crazy about Nick. Maybe too many noir detective shows when he was a kid, maybe his love of hard luck stories, maybe he knew the man Nick was modelled on in some past life. Maybe it's just that Nick is a good man and that's something that transcends biology. "Kiss me."

It's the perfect setting for it, the two of them caught in the halo of light under a restored street lamp at the corner of the old Red Rocket garage. The night is a little misty, the Minutemen have finished repairing their own gear and drifted off to tell tall tales around the roasting radstag on the spit, the sky is clear and full of stars. Dogmeat is the only one close enough to see or hear them, his soft seesaw panting is broken by a curious whine when the silence between Nick and Brand goes on too long.

"You fool," Nick says, tight and creaky with more than just how old he is. His lips are soft and worn and dry but still tender when he presses them to Brand's. "Hardly remember how to do that," he mutters before Brand grabs him by the front of the coat and pulls him in to kiss him back.

This time it's lips and teeth and tongue. Nick's mouth is warm and clean and slightly metallic, it's moist with fluid that keeps it moving smoothly just like a human's. His tongue is supple and quick, too strong but that just sparks a heat in Brand when he considers the things Nick could do with it. Nick hums, not musically but mechanically, the hum of a living machine that goes right to Brand's bones when he presses against Nick's lean frame while they kiss too long and too desperately, risking being seen with every passing second.

"Like riding a bicycle," Brand says, when he can bring himself to speak. He's got Nick backed up against the lamp post and Nick's hands are tangled in his hair.

"Never knew how to ride one," Nick says dryly. When he lets go of Brand, Brand's curls catch in his exposed finger joints and Brand's scalp prickles with a dozen tiny points of pain. "Sorry, sorry. See, this is..."

"Don't." Brand puts a hand against Nick's mouth long enough to stop that train of thought. "It's just pain. That's never stopped me from going after what I want."

"And what you want is me." Nick states the obvious but in that way he has, that way of looking for answers to unasked questions, questions he didn't even know he had, in people's responses to the obvious. It's surprisingly effective.

"Yes. Please." Brand steps back to compose himself a little. It's incredibly uncomfortable to be this aroused while wearing full combat armour.

"You got me, kid." Nick settles his coat and hat back the way they were before Brand got to him. "Just do me a favour and keep this undercover, okay? Subtlety is kind of my game and making out in public--not exactly subtle."

"As long as you're under the covers with me, that's fine." Brand winks at Nick and is rewarded with a laugh.

"Think you can keep it in your pants until we reach Sanctuary?" Nick looks up at the sky to check the time. Brand still hasn't mastered the trick but he doesn't have Nick's internal processors to track the movement of the sun and stars. "Your people can hold this place no problem and I'd feel better knowing we had Sanctuary's defences between us and anything out there that hates a little romance."

"I'm getting a little romance?" Brand shoulders his pack and Dogmeat, taking the hint, comes trotting out of his dog house.

"Can't help how I'm programmed, kid," Nick says. "Take or leave it. Now let's get this show on the road."

Brand will take it. He'll take all of it. The misty night, the rising moon, the rush of the river--for a moment it feels as though nothing has ever been wrong or will ever be wrong for as long as he lives. It's an illusion woven of lighting and endorphins and sentiment but sometimes the illusion is enough.

"Feels like a movie," Nick says, echoing Brand's thoughts. "People always say I sound like I'm in the movies but I never feel like it. That's just my life. This, this feels like someone wrote it--someone with an unrealistic sense of the dramatic, mind you."

"Don't knock what sells." Brand slides an arm around Nick's shoulders. He's taller than Nick, taller than most people, and broader. Built like he's already in a suit of power armour, his old CO used to say. "Times are tough. People need a little happiness. And don't tell me you're not people."  
  
"Wouldn't dare." Nick leans into him just enough that Brand can feel the shift. That's no mistake. Nick's mechanics are still purring along well enough that he doesn't need to lean on anyone if he doesn't want to. "Wasn't even thinking it. You make me feel like people, kid. Not everyone does. You make anyone who comes around feel like people, no matter who they are, no matter what's been done to them. That's why they keep coming back."

The bridge to Sanctuary creaks underfoot as they cross, a familiar tune. Ahead of them, a trio of caravan brahmin jostle for the best bits of grass and foliage by the gatehouse. Dogmeat romps ahead with a happy bark, probably on his way to sucker Preston out of some kitchen scraps.

"You're giving me too much credit, I'm just being decent." From here, Brand can see the lights of the little house by the river he calls his own. He's never been able to move back into the place he shared with Nora, the one her parents bought them. It was never really his.

"Decent is hard to come by in this place," Nick drawls. "Don't knock it, Brand. I'm not trying to make you uncomfortable, I know folks like to put you on a pedestal. I'm just telling you what you are to people, no matter how you make the magic happen. You make me forget I don't have a real heart in this titanium and aluminium chest of mine, feels like there's something alive in there when you're near me. Flutters like a bird. First time it happened, I thought I was falling apart at last but I guess I wasn't. Guess I was just falling for you. Scarier than dying, to be honest. That, I was ready for. This, not so much."

They pass the guard posts and turn right before the gatehouse, following the broken stone edge of the river to Brand's home with the blue door emblazoned with the Minutemen symbol. On the frame, down near the bottom on the right, there's a little white star with a cross at the centre.

"Me, either," Brand has to admit. He lets Nick go up the steps ahead of him. His door isn't locked, he never locks it. He doesn't really own anything to speak of, whatever he's got belongs to his people.

"I gotta ask." Nick steps inside first and flips on the light. A single bulb lights up the small space with a warm yellow glow. "You were married to a woman before, and while I know that doesn't necessarily mean one thing or the other..." He lets the sentence trail off and busies himself hanging up his coat and hat.

"I never really much cared about the outside of people." Brand sets his gear down and starts unpacking it automatically, same way he always does, so he knows where everything is. "Nora and I were a team, she was smart and funny and driven and she saw what was wrong with the world more clearly than I could. She opened my eyes to what was going on around us--until her, I was just a cog in the machine. I loved her for that. It wasn't like I saw a beautiful woman and went after her. Once I knew Nora, that was all I saw. Nora. If they put her mind in a Mr. Handy, if they turned her into a Super Mutant like Virgil, I'd feel the same as long as she was still Nora. I can fight but I think the world would be better off with her here instead of me. She could have given better--"

Suddenly, Brand's got his back to the wall and Nick's mouth on his, cutting off the rest of what he has to say. It's something that's on his mind a lot but he lets it go because he never imagined Nick kissing him like this, fierce and deliberate, delicate metal fingers pressing into the flesh of Brand's jaw.

"You see better than anyone I've ever met including me, and seeing the truth is what I'm made to do," Nick says in a low voice Brand's never heard from him before. Nick's amber eyes flicker like neon, then the glow steadies again. "She taught you well, kid. The world is lucky to have you."

"And you?" Brand runs his fingers over Nick's smooth, bare scalp.

"I'd fire the writer of this radio show for being too damn unrealistic," Nick says with a bit of a laugh. "But this is real life and real life doesn't have to be realistic the way fiction does. I'm more than lucky. If there is some kind of deity out there I'm proof it likes synths as much as humans, maybe more, because of you. Blessed. If I believed in that kind of thing, I'd say blessed."

"Same here." Brand carefully undoes Nick's tie, waiting for an objection that doesn't come. Getting Nick out of his clothes doesn't happen often. Once, in fact, and that was because some damned Forged asshole set him on fire.

"Now that, I don't get," Nick admits. His fingers are strong enough to handle the buckles of Brand's armour better than just about anyone, even Brand. He starts with Brand's arm guards, same as Brand does.

"I had no clue, no hope of finding Shaun. And then there you were. In this post-apocalyptic mess I find a real detective who helps me find my son--risks his life for it even though he doesn't know me." Brand runs his thumb along the repair he made back at the station. "You walked into what passes for Hell around here to help me track Shaun down. You're good people, Nick. And I like that. I need it."

"Sorry it didn't turn out better," Nick says gently.

"Me, too." Brand tries not to dwell on that, on everything he lost, everything he missed out on in Shaun's life.

"Thanks for not telling me this makes up for it." Nick sets Brand's arm guards aside, then takes the shotgun Brand keeps strapped across his back.

"You're not some kind of compensation package for losing my family. You're separate. You're. You're just you. And I'd feel a lot like this about you no matter what. Only thing different is what I can do about it."

"What you can do about it right now is eat something," Nick says, changing the subject deftly. He's good at that. "I'm counting about eight hours since you ate and you fought a couple rounds of Super Mutants in there and before that there was that wandering Sentrybot, just for some extra excitement."

"You keep track of when I eat?" The mention of the bot reminds Brand that he pulled some good circuit boards out of it.

"I got a computer in here, kid." Nick taps his skull. "I'd be crazy not to put it to good use. And making sure you're okay counts as good use. Go offload your junk and I'll make you dinner. I may not need to eat but that doesn't keep me from cooking."

Nick is a hell of a good cook. It's what people would call fusion cooking, no pun intended, but it works. Brand polishes off three bowls of brahmin noodle soup and follows it up with a beer from Buddy. Before he's done the beer, he's asleep at the table, something he doesn't know has happened until he's woken by Nick moving him over to the bed.

"Stay here," he mumbles, pulling at Nick's shirt as Nick is lying him down. "With me."

"I was planning on it," Nick says patiently. He undoes Brand's belt so he can strip off Brand's dirt-stiff pants.

"Really?" Brand forces his eyes open to read Nick's face. Synths have remarkably clear facial expressions unless, like Couriers, they're designed otherwise.

"Would I lie to you, kid?"

"Only for my own good." Brand knows the score. He closes his eyes but Nick's laugh tells him all he needs to know. "Get undressed and get under the covers, Nick. The way people do. I'm tired of sleeping alone."

It's not the same as waking up with Nora, and that's kind of a blessing. Nora was all softness and curves and sighs, Nick is angles and tension and he hums even in his sleep. Downtime, he calls it. It's as good as sleeping. Still, his back is pressed to Brand's chest, his body curved into Brand's almost as if he's human.

Nick smells familiar, of cigarettes and leather and oil and a little ozone from the occasional spark somewhere in his works. His body still retains the original yielding insulation and synthetic musculature under his smooth skin. All his sensors still work, Brand can tell by the twitch of his belly when Brand traces the seams between his panels.

Brand wonders if he should worry about himself, about being aroused by the pressure of Nick's body against his. Part of his mind argues that Nick isn't alive. But Nick hums and sighs and murmurs like he's alive, just another kind of life, and Brand can't help the way his body responds. He wants that union with his partner, no matter what his partner's form.

The neediness Brand feels is embarrassing--he doesn't need, doesn't want, he's like a synth himself that way. That's why he's good at what he does but now he's made of need and ache and lust. His erection slides against the curve of Nick's ass, it's been so long since he had any kind of release that didn't come from his own hand. It's not the doing it himself, it's the doing it alone he can't bear.

"Hey, kid," Nick says softly. He doesn't pull away, not even when Brand tightens his arm around Nick's waist and rolls his hips against Nick in spite of himself. "It's okay." Nick's better hand caresses Brand's hip, soothing.

"I just, I need." Brand can't find the words to explain himself, any thought he had disintegrates when his cock slides into the little hollow space where Nick's thighs don't quite meet below his smooth, featureless groin. It's warm there, and it gives a little almost like flesh, and it tightens around Brand's cock when Nick flexes in response to his first thrust.

"I know," Nick says patiently. He sounds affected but he's still so calm; he's reassuring the way he always is. That's his own magic. "Like I said, it's okay." Brand believes him.

"Oh, God." Brand closes his eyes, presses his face to the nape of Nick's neck as though he can hide there. The friction of skin on skin is almost painful as Brand's body keeps moving, keeps fucking, but then his own fluid seeps out with every thrust to make the passage smooth. It's wet and delicious, Nick's hand tightens on Brand's hip and keeps him steady as he gets erratic with the rising need to come. "Nick, that's so good."

"Good. You deserve good, baby." Nick tilts his hips, pushes back against Brand as though they're really fucking, and that's too much. Brand comes in a rush, muffling his wail of pleasure against the much-mended skin of Nick's shoulder.

After, all Brand wants to do is hide. Nick rolls over to face him but it's only to give Brand what he needs again. Nick pulls Brand into his too-strong arms and lets him hide, one hand between Brand's shoulder blades like an anchor and the other gentle on Brand's hair. It takes a while, probably too long, but Brand starts to feel as though he could maybe look Nick in the eye. His body feels unravelled and there's a little euphoria dancing along his nerves from his orgasm.

"Guess you proved me wrong," Nick murmurs in his ear.

"How?" Brand moves enough to kiss the place he glued back together yesterday. He wanted to kiss it then, like he could kiss it better, but he'd resisted at the time.

"Didn't think we could actually have sex, but shows how much I know." Nick chuckles and Brand gets to feel the way his laugh goes all the way down into his chest. "Got any other ideas?"

"Lots," Brand says, with more enthusiasm than he'd meant to let loose this early. That gets him even more of a laugh from Nick.

"Well, you're the expert, kid." Nick kisses his temple. "You let me know."

"You can't..." Brand pulls back to look at Nick. "I mean. You don't..."

"People have always been terrible at talking about sex, I see," Nick says with a crooked grin. "Orgasms, no. But it's good. I like it so far. Little messy but most fun things are. It's nice that I can do that for you. With you. Nice that I get to be the one. And isn't that most of it? The other person? Being together? I got that part down fine."

"Yeah, that's most of it." Brand kisses Nick on the mouth, slowly, and Nick obliges him with a hot, open-mouthed kiss in return.

"I'm looking forward to doing it again," Nick says, when Brand has to come up for air. "Think it'll just get better in time. I like a challenge. I like anticipation. I love a good risk and a better payoff. I wasn't sure how it'd all work out but I think we're gonna be fine."

"Undercover, still?" Brand runs his hand around to the small of Nick's back to pull him closer.

"Undercover, still," Nick says firmly. "But you know how much I love the shadows. The best things in life happen there."


End file.
